The Night Ferry by Michael Robotham (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard)

A young policewoman breaks all the rules to get to the bottom of the mysterious death of the best friend she betrayed in this stunning follow-up thriller from the author of Suspect and Lost.

Ali Barba, a Sikh detective with the Metropolitan Police, is recovering from injuries sustained in the line of duty when she receives a letter from her estranged friend, Cate, imploring her to come to their high school reunion. Alarmed by the urgent tone of the note, and eager to make amends for her unforgivable past behavior, Ali goes to the reunion. Cate is pregnant, but before Ali has the chance to congratulate her, Cate hurriedly whispers, “They want to take my baby. You have to stop them.” It is the only hint of Cate’s troubles Ali manages to get. As they are leaving the reunion, Cate and her husband are run down by a car and killed. The mystery darkens when it is discovered that Cate had faked her pregnancy by tying a pillow underneath her dress.

All Ali has to go on is a file in Cate’s desk that contains two ultrasound pictures, letters from a fertility clinic, and various papers that seem to confirm the unborn baby’s existence. As she puts together the pieces, her search takes her to Amsterdam and into the company of some very unsavory people on both sides of the Channel who'll do anything to thwart her investigation.

A gripping thriller and a searing tale of the search for redemption, The Night Ferry is Michael Robotham’s finest novel yet.

Michael Robotham was born in Australia in 1960. In 1979, he moved to Sydney and became a cadet journalist on an afternoon newspaper. He spent the next fourteen years working for newspapers in Australia, Europe, Africa and America. As a senior feature writer for the United Kingdom's Mail on Sunday, he was among the first people to view the letters and diaries of Czar Nicholas II and his wife Empress Alexandra discovered in the Moscow State Archives in 1991. He also gained access to Stalin's Hitler files, which had been missing for nearly fifty years. He left journalism in 1993 to become a ghostwriter, collaborating with politicians, pop stars, psychologists, adventurers and show business personalities to write their autobiographies. He also writes novels including The Suspect; The Drowning Man, which won the 2005 Ned Kelly Award for the Crime Novel of the Year; The Night Ferry; and Shatter, which won the 2008 Ned Kelly Award for the Crime Novel of the Year.